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Jewish World Review August 24, 2005 / 19 Av, 5765 It's the theaters, stupid By Froma Harrop
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Movie theater attendance has been trending downward for years.
Everyone has an opinion on the reason.
The more popular explanations: People don't go to theaters
because they can see movies in their fabulous home-entertainment centers.
They stay away because they're angry over the ads and the price for popcorn.
The most quoted reason is that the new movies are lousy. No one wants to see
them.
I have my theory, and it's none of the above. The drop in
attendance is not about what's playing in the theaters, the popcorn
concession or the facilities at home. It's the theaters, themselves.
One recalls the famous line in "Sunset Boulevard." A guy says to
the aging movie star Norma Desmond, "You used to be big." Desmond responds:
"I'm still big. It's the pictures that got small."
Today, the pictures are still big. It's the movie theaters that
got small. Long gone are the Odeons, the Capitols and the Majestics. Their
cherubs and lush drapery decay in landfills, and their Mighty Wurlitzers
play for the angels. A few survivors have been promoted to "performing-arts
centers," but the palace as movie theater is history. Half the fun was
sitting in those wedding-cake decors — which made up for the fact that the
other half may have been a clunker like "Bewitched."
Sometime in the 1960s, a developer with no sense of humor
decided that the movie-going experience should take place in a box on a
shopping strip. The multiplex was born. The multiplexes multiplied, pulling
the plug on the Orpheums then holding up the increasingly seedy downtowns.
No one really liked going to the warren of cells that now passed for movie
theaters, but that was the only place to see a movie — until the home
options arrived.
So there is some truth to the idea that DVD players, cable movie
channels, TiVo and Netflix have been taking business from movie theaters.
But they are competing against the coal-mine shafts at the multiplexes, not
the grand old Paramounts.
(As for those grand home-entertainment centers, I see them at
big electronics stores and on "The Sopranos." I know only one person who has
the full deal, and he's a tycoon. Who else is paying the multi-thousands for
an acre of flat screen remains a mystery to me.)
My TV at home is a 27-inch number and not flat. I play panoramic
Westerns on that pathetic little set rather than venture to the multiplex,
where screens are a lot bigger but still unworthy of the Grand Tetons. If
I'm going to compromise, let me compromise in comfort, away from untamed
cell phones and flu germs of others.
People want to stay at home these days? Not true, if they have
someplace to go. Look at the crowds hanging around the malls on a Saturday
night. Folks are there for the spectacle. If there were spectacular
theaters, people would go to them more often.
I now read that a few multiplex operators are trying to bring a
little glamour back into movie-going. They serve wine and shrimp, in
addition to the Mars Bars. (If these guys charge $5 for a Coke, imagine what
a Chardonnay costs.) They're installing chandeliers and decorating the walls
with scenes of ancient Rome. Too bad they killed off the real thing on Main
Street.
Do I know for certain that lots of people would drive downtown
and pay for parking to watch Batman in a resurrected Paramount palace? I do
not.
But I would. And until I have that option, most of my movie
watching will remain at home. Steven Spielberg's tripods will not be very
scary rampaging across my Magnavox. And Tom Cruise will get no bigger than a
bottle opener. But the only phone ringing will be mine.
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© 2005 Creators Syndicate |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
